Heaven on Earth
by FannyT
Summary: Nash did indeed start a bar when he lost his final boxing match. Run by himself and his bird, it’s a place where many unusual customers feel strangely at home. And one night Nash has a visitor he would never have expected. Disclaimer: I don’t own Petshop


Heaven on earth

Five years had passed since Nash had suffered his final knock-out and in that time his bar Cockatoo's Corner had flourished. It was an informal, cosy joint, loved by many. Although he had made enough money to employ at least five bartenders, Nash preferred to man the bar himself and could be found there every day of the week, always with a welcome word to his regulars. And another one with words of welcome, although not always as polite, was his pet bird. It had no cage and flew freely in the bar, but most of the time it stayed on its favourite perch: Nash's shoulder. The two of them held long, nonsensical conversations on every subject from boots to philosophy, and no one who heard them could doubt that the bird had an intelligent mind of its own. Nash quite obviously considered it cleverer than most humans, and it was sometimes said by the more nasty-minded customers that it seemed to be his substitute for a girlfriend.

Although never when Nash – or his bird, which had been known to tell on anyone insulting its owner – was nearby.

Nash had customers of every class of society, but many of his regulars had one ting in common: an air of mystery, a sense of being different. They talked to his bird with a tone of familiarity that was in some cases even greater than the one they used with Nash, and their gaze would make the unwary watcher who met their eyes feel nervous. And although they didn't all seem to know each other, every now and again one of them would exchange a word or two with another apparently at random – and someone who passed by would catch a name being whispered. A strange name, that hinted of love and dreams and desires.

Amongst Nash's most frequent visitors were two ladies who he thought he recognized from the front page of several women's magazines. They always came in together, often for lunch and sometimes for dinner. And they ate. Nash had always thought that models lived largely on sticks of cucumber and boiled water, but these two ate like they were about to hibernate – and never seemed to gain so much as an ounce. Sleek and beautiful like strange unearthly creatures, they glided into his bar with their thousand dollar clothes and dark sunglasses, and left him feeling equally puzzled each time as to why they chose _his_ place. Lately they had been bringing a third woman along, too – she ate as much as the other two combined and shone like a newly-risen star. But she seemed to be looking for something.

Another regular was a young woman called miss Karen. She said she loved his place because it was one of the few bars where she could bring her dog, Deizehn, and sure enough the large Doberman accompanied her every time she came. Nash felt a kinship with her. It was something he could not himself define or put words to, but he knew that his bird, at least, felt something similar. It would fly from his shoulder the minute miss Karen stepped through the door and perch on Dreizehn's back, and wouldn't leave until it was time for the young woman and her dog to go. And while miss Karen and Nash exchanged news and stories, the bird and the dog would put their heads close together and talk about things only meant for their own ears. Nash had asked his bird, once, what they discussed. It had not answered.

The possibly most curious of Nash's customers was the woman who only came at night, and always alone. She left with company practically every time, however – but never with the same guy twice. In fact, Nash couldn't recall ever seeing her nightly escorts again… She had introduced herself once as Norma, and said she had lost one she loved. She drank Bloody Mary but thought it was named incorrectly and often talked about suing its inventors for false advertising.

Once, at noon on a busy Tuesday, a young girl stepped into the bar. She looked no older than ten or eleven, but ran up to him as if she had every right to be there and jumped up on one of the bar stools.

"A glass of milk please!"

"Sorry?" Nash wrinkled his brow in confusion. A girl that young shouldn't be running around in his part of town without a parent…

"A glass of milk please," repeated the girl, slowly and clearly. On Nash's shoulder, the bird sniggered and then leapt into the air, swooped towards the girl and skidded to a halt right in front of her. She giggled, and reached out a hand to pet it.

Nash shrugged. He was not a complicated man, and he had never seen the need to ask too many questions. He left the girl introducing herself to the bird ("My name is L-A-D-Y, Lady. My dad says it's the prettiest name in the world. Is your name Polly? My dad says parrots are called Polly, and that they like crackers. Do you like crackers?") and went into a back room to find some milk. When he was on his way back he saw a man come rushing in through the door, breathing heavily.

"Lady!" he called, looking wildly around himself. "Lady, where – oh, there you are!"

Nash had just been about to tell the man that his daughter was at the bar counter, but he had already run over and picked up a small, white kitten. The girl was nowhere to be seen. "I was so worried…" panted the man, cuddling the kitten close. "Thank you, sir, for taking care of her." He seized Nash's hand and shook it firmly, and then left. When Nash asked his bird what had happened to the girl, it only snickered at him.

A week later Cockatoo's Corner was awarded first place in a survey of bars and pubs he hadn't even known he was entered in. "Lucky," he said to his bird. It fondly told him that he was stupid.

……………………………………………………

"Another great day, eh?" said the bird, hopping down from Nash's shoulder to pick at some left-over peanuts on the bar counter. It was almost closing time, and Nash was washing out some of the last glasses. Norma had left with a young Asian guy an hour or so back, and the two – no, three – models had just said their goodbyes and gone on their way. The only ones still there were a young couple, sharing an Irish Whiskey and talking lovers' nonsense, and the retired ballet dancer Nicholas Pellatier. He came in every night, and sat alone in a corner until the bar closed, drinking to numb himself and to forget the woman he had once loved. Jeanne la Croix had been her name, the famous ballet dancer who had disappeared little over six years earlier – taking Nicholas's life and career with her. For he had never been the same since… He said he still felt her spirit, sometimes, and never so strongly as in Cockatoo's Corner. Nash let him stay for as long as he wanted. He was never one to hinder a man from dreaming.

"Another great day," Nash agreed, and started wiping down the glasses he had just washed. "Aren't they all, bird?"

"You know, I find it insulting to be called simply 'bird'," said the bird peevishly. Nash smiled. It wasn't the first time they had the conversation. "I don't feel that you respect me. I mean, just take the name of this freaking place! _Cockatoo's_ Corner? Last time I checked, I was a parakeet! Nice way to pay tribute to me, real nice."

"I think you'll appreciate that "Parakeet's Corner" doesn't have quite the same ring to it," said Nash calmly. "Besides, I seem to remember that you expressively forbid me to call my place anything with parakeet in it on account of it being corny and unnecessarily sentimental."

The bird looked miffed. "Well, I still don't like being called bird. You'll have to make up a name. That's what humans do, or so I understand."

"Alright… how about Tweets?"

"Tweets!" shrieked the bird, flapping its wings in outrage. "Do I look like a bloody budgerigar? I thought I told you to try and _not_ insult me!"

"Sorry. What about Birdo, then?"

"You call that a name? That's even worse than just bird!"

"P-chan?"

"Oh, just stop it," said the bird in disgust. "You're making me gag."

"Well, can't you come up with a name yourself?" smiled Nash. "I think "just bird" suits you, but you should be allowed to choose for yourself, of course."

"You're the human. You're the one who's supposed to name me." The bird pondered for a while. "Although if you need help that badly… I wouldn't mind being called Gavin."

"Gavin…" Nash tasted the name, and nodded. It was definitely better than many other names the bird had chosen to call himself at some point or another. "Works for me."

"It can be changed, of course."

"Of course."

"I mean, it's not like writing in permanent marker and then realizing you've made a mistake, is it, I can still decide that it's not my actual _name_, you know…"

"If you find a name you like better, I have nothing against you changing it."

"Good. Just making sure we all know where we stand."

"Me behind the bar, you on it."

"Well, yes. Do you have to take everything literally?"

"It's always worked for me."

The door opened then, letting in a gust of cold wind. The autumn was long gone and the last couple of nights had left the ground glittering with frost. The young couple shivered, and then leaned closer together, sharing a kiss and giggling into each other's mouths.

Nash looked up as the figure who had entered sat down at the bar. "We're almost at closing time, sir," he said mildly. The newly arrived man waved a hand irritably. He was wearing a dark jacket, with the hood pulled up high and hiding his features.

"I have time for a beer."

Nash shrugged and laid his towel aside, took the glass he'd just finished drying off and started filling it with beer. The stranger threw a note on the bar.

"Keep the change. What do you call this joint?"

"Cockatoo's Corner," Nash supplied. "I'm Nash by the way, and this here is… Gavin." He paused and expected the bird to snap out some sarcastic, witty comment. It was such drama queen… eh, bird… and couldn't ever resist startling newcomers, doing anything to get a laugh. Telling jokes, doing impersonations, formation flying – you name it, the bird did it, and with gusto. However, the newly named Gavin didn't say a word, only stared silently and unblinkingly at the stranger.

"Is he the one you bought from Count D's shop?" asked the man, and his voice was just a little less impersonal, little less dead as he spoke the name. The name of dreams. Hopes. Desires.

"Yes, he is…" Nash stopped. "How do you know about that?"

The stranger didn't answer. He sat for a long while in silence, rocking his beer glass in a small circle, the drink sloshing around inside like liquid amber. Then, just as Nash was about to leave him alone to his thoughts and start putting away the glasses, the man let go of the glass and pulled down his hood.

"Been a while, Nash," he said.

His hair was blond, long and tousled, and his face was lined and bronzed with sun. he hadn't shaved for a while and some of the stubble hinted at grey. But the eyes were the same as ever.

"My god," said Nash quietly. "Leon."

……………………………………………………

The bar had closed. The young couple had danced into the night and Nicholas had lurched off, his bleary, drunken eyes looking at Leon as if they saw something there no one else could. Gavin had settled down on Nash's shoulder again, but he still hadn't spoken since Leon walked in through the door.

"Leon," said Nash again. "I thought you were dead."

Leon laughed, a short bark void of mirth. "So did I," he said.

"But you were saved from that… that explosion… and the fire…" Nash wrinkled his brow, tried to recall that event of more than four years earlier. He had read about it in the paper, read Leon's name and thrown himself on the phone. He'd learned that Leon had survived the fire, was in hospital, would shortly be released. And then… "And then you disappeared. There were rumours… that you'd gone to find someone… and when you didn't get back we all just thought…" Nash sighed. That moment when you stop hoping, that's the moment when a small part of you dies. "That police broad, Jill… she kept looking for you a long time. I still get her in here occasionally. She talks about you a lot." He didn't tell Leon how Jill cried every time she came in, saying that she always remembered him strongest when she was at Cuckatoo's Corner. Leon probably knew, anyway.

"She'd do better to forget." Leon downed the last of his second beer. "Of all the guys she could have… she shouldn't go off chasing dreams. Trust me," the short bark of laughter again, "I know what it leads to."

"Where did you go after the fire?" asked Nash. "What did you – " Gavin shifted from foot to clawed foot uneasily and he stopped to let the bird speak. But it changed its mind, seemingly, and stayed silent. Leon did as well, looking down into the bottom of his glass like he could find there the answer to all the world's riddles. Nash let him. He had been a bartender for five years, and he knew that to let people speak, you must first be silent yourself. And a question pushed could mean an answer not given.

"I've been searching," said Leon finally, "for such a long time… trying to reach, to change… to become something better… I've been walking, for years and years and years and one step at a time, but one step too many is all too much, and I must start over…" He drew a deep breath, staring at his glass, rocking it around, and around, and around… "I haven't been here, not all the time, but in another place… dark, and lonely, and no sounds or smells or colours or time and the only one there is me and…" He paused again. For some time the only sound was that of his glass against the bar top, and then he set it down firmly, looking at his friend.

"I'm not making much sense," he said.

"No," said Nash, who had always by nature been a truthful person.

"I'll try, alright?" sighed Leon, sitting back a little. "There's this place, you see, and it's like… the one place you know is _right_, you come there and you feel… home. And everything you've done, everything that was wrong, it's gone and… and you're just right. And it's… wait, I'm still starting in the wrong place." He shook his head with irritation and started anew. "Just… the shop. It starts with the shop. You remember when I took you to meet D? And you said you were on a diet, and he sold you a bird…"

Nash raised his hand to stroke Gavin's head, and nodded.

"Good. Yeah. Because that's where it all begins… and in a sense, it all ends there as well…"

"It closed, didn't it? The shop. And him, the count, he disappeared too. Just before the fire, and there was an investigation…" Nash frowned. "You warned me against buying something from him. You said he only sold weird things, pets that were dangerous…" Gavin stirred under his hand, and he scratched the bird's neck fondly.

"And I was wrong," nodded Leon. "He used to have this little saying… _I deal in love and dreams._ And it's true, he does. But if you don't deserve it… the dream turns into a nightmare. I saw too many of those nightmares to believe he really did any good. But that was just me, not seeing what was right in front of me." He sighed abruptly, shoving his hands through his hair and running his fingers through the tangles. When he spoke again it was in a quiet voice that seemed to come from far away. "After the fire, I was… well, you'd say I was dreaming. For the few days I was in a coma at the hospital, I was somewhere else, although it only felt like minutes to me while I was there. I was with D, on a ship that was the pet shop, and he told me he'd sail it to another Chinatown in a new city, setting up the shop again. And the ship, it's hard to… but it's like summer afternoons, and tea the way you like it, and a little kid hugging you, and every good memory you have, everything you love."

"Paradise," mumbled Nash. Leon shrugged.

"Well… yeah. I'm not religious, but that might be one way of describing it… anyway, I was there. And all the animals from the shop were there, too, only… you know miss Karen?"

Nash blinked, confused over the change of subject. "She's in here often," he answered, wondering what Leon wanted with the question.

"You ever ask her out? She's pretty."

"What? No, I'm not… besides, she has Dreizehn, she wouldn't…" Even as he said the words, he realized how strange they sounded. Dreizehn was a dog, why mention him? At the same time, though, it was true. Dreizehn filled miss Karen's heart. No one else could be given a larger part of it.

"That's what I mean," said Leon. "They're not just animals, they're…"

"We're us," said Gavin. Nash turned his head to look at his bird in surprise, but Leon merely nodded.

"Exactly. And they're there in the ship, going across the sky, and everything's just perfect, only…" He paused, drew breath. "Only I couldn't be there. He pushed me off. D, I mean. Because he said, _Humans have not earned the right to board the ship. Not yet._ And you know, Nash… he's right. We do so much bad, there's so much cruelty… and we're slowly strangling the earth as we go… destroying ourselves…"

"Sounds to me," said Gavin quietly, "as if you're learning."

"I try," mumbled Leon, his hands over his face. "I've tried for… how long?"

"For years since the fire," said Gavin.

"Four years… I've been looking for D. I'm trying so hard… and I look everywhere, but all the time I come back t the dark place and everything I've done comes back and it's just me and my life in there and I'm so alone…" His voice was desperate, full of pain, the hands over his face now hiding tears. "And I can't find him. No matter how hard I look… I'm human. I know I'm human, but I can't help it! I need to find my way back there, to the ship, to D. I know I don't deserve it, but… living here, now, is like living every day in hell."

"But it takes time," said the bird gently. It hopped down from Nash's shoulder and walked over the bar top to lay its head against Leon's arm. Nash watched in silence, knowing that right now, Leon didn't need him. He was confused and at sea, but Gavin knew what was happening. And Nash trusted Gavin.

"You're learning, but you have humanity to atone for," whispered Gavin. "You will find your way back, one day. And that day will be worth the wait. If you were to board the ship now, you would not be happy. You would be ill at ease, not home there. It's not your time yet… but it will come. Don't chase the ship! When your day is here, the sip will come for you."

Leon drew breath deeply. His hands were shaking. And as Nash quietly slipped away, knowing as always when he was not necessary anymore, he heard Gavin's small bird voice soothing the man as he sobbed, over humanity, broken dreams and a paradise lost.

……………………………………………………

"It's a nice place you've got," said Leon, an hour later. He was just about to leave, standing at the door and looking around the bar one last time.

"Thank you. I love it." Nash had offered the other man to stay the night, but Leon had refused. He was on his way again, chasing his dream.

"It's…" Leon smiled for the first time, seemingly unused to the movement. "It's like the pet shop. Alive. And I'm only guessing now, but you get many strange customers, don't you?"

"I guess." Nash shrugged. Leon nodded, his eyes taking in the room.

"In you bar," he said slowly, "the scattered ones who were once part of D's company might just have found a haven. Something that is not quite the shop, but as close as it gets on earth. I would probably stay here too, if I could, but… I must keep searching."

"You'll manage one day, to find what you look for," said Gavin. "Don't give up. That day will come, but no one can tell how soon."

"Good luck," Nash filled in. "Maybe one day we'll see each other again. Maybe when I've started searching, as well. I imagine I have much to learn."

Leon paused in the door and looked at him long in silence. "Maybe you do," he said at last. "But I think you'll learn faster and easier than I have done." He smiled again, closed his jacket against the cold wind, and walked out into the night. Nash and Gavin stood in the door until he had vanished in the darkness; then Nash closed the door again, walked back to the bar counter and picked up Leon's beer glass.

"Do you think he really will find Count D again?" he asked, and the bird jumped from his shoulder to nibble up a last, forgotten peanut.

"He will," it answered, with conviction. "It will take him long to get there, because he has so much to learn… but one day the ship will be there for him. And the count will welcome him with open arms, if I know him right. By the way, I'm thinking Gavin doesn't really suit me. Just call me Pepsi, OK?"

"OK," smiled Nash. He walked behind the bar to wash Leon's glass out, and set it to dry on a shelf. He stayed for a moment then, slowly looking over his bar to see if there was anything amiss. Everything looked alright – clean, cosy, and full of the life that made it so special. The atmosphere that was not entirely human, and not entirely animal, but a little bit of each and the best of both. That was not D's ship, but the next best thing. A heaven of sorts, but on earth.

Not-Gavin-but-currently-Pepsi looked up from the peanut. "Hey Nash, better start thinking about bed. All this philosophy is taking it out of me. And we have to be nice and fresh tomorrow, make it another great day."

"Another great day," said Nash, and thought about his friend, slowly bettering himself to gain access to his paradise. He smiled, and held out his arm for his bird, his companion, his other half. "Aren't they all?"

_THE END_

……………………………………………………

Hello 'ello! Here is an interesting (who am I kidding) insight in the writing process of Heaven on Earth:

Saturday night: Got the idea for a fic.

Sunday: Borrowed the entire Petshop series from my sister and started looking up names.

Monday: Wrote the fic.

Tuesday: Copied fic onto the other computer and put it up.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Fanny wrote her first Petshop of Horrors fic! (This is where you applaud me.)

Don't have anything else to say, actually. Tally-ho!


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